as I started to read your piece, 78296 and 84720 came immediately to mind. phone numbers from my youth. dialed without any area code. the first was also a party line, shared with some unknown entity who felt very intrusive and mysterious to a six year old. thanks for the look back, Paul. how things have changed.
Party lines are a concept that would be so completely alien to young people now. Or the idea of someone in your house picking up on another phone and listening in.
Love this piece so much in all its incarnations! Minus the "Busman's Holiday" (thank you for returning that expression to me!) & need for morning coffee, I relate madly & specifically. Our childhood phone number began with BA4-, which stood for Bayside, my hometown, & my mom had it as her landline until the day she died. I own her personal phone book & still refer to it for the occasional mailing address - the neat cross-outs & squeezed-in updates are a beautiful old-school illustration of lives in flux. Thanks for this great evocative piece. So odd that we committed all those lengthy phone numbers to memory.
It's more than just nostalgia. Granted, some of this stuff is missing one's youth as much as anything else, but I continue to think of what we have lost with all of the technological capabilities we have gained.
Always fun and a bit kooky. Love the way your mind works. Prestidigitations. Something about this is a Marx Brother movie. Harpo pulling an entire phone book from his pocket. And a heavy duty phone from the opoosite pocket. Then dialing and getting a pastry shop owner on the other end.
as I started to read your piece, 78296 and 84720 came immediately to mind. phone numbers from my youth. dialed without any area code. the first was also a party line, shared with some unknown entity who felt very intrusive and mysterious to a six year old. thanks for the look back, Paul. how things have changed.
Party lines are a concept that would be so completely alien to young people now. Or the idea of someone in your house picking up on another phone and listening in.
TEmple 5 (aka TE-5) was what I grew up with... and my elderly mother still has that landline :) Appreciate your help in dredging up that fond memory!!
Life has moved so fast the last 25 years, it seems that dredging is the only way to get back there in memory.
Love this piece so much in all its incarnations! Minus the "Busman's Holiday" (thank you for returning that expression to me!) & need for morning coffee, I relate madly & specifically. Our childhood phone number began with BA4-, which stood for Bayside, my hometown, & my mom had it as her landline until the day she died. I own her personal phone book & still refer to it for the occasional mailing address - the neat cross-outs & squeezed-in updates are a beautiful old-school illustration of lives in flux. Thanks for this great evocative piece. So odd that we committed all those lengthy phone numbers to memory.
Thanks, El!
Thanks Paul! It’s fun to look back on those days.
It's more than just nostalgia. Granted, some of this stuff is missing one's youth as much as anything else, but I continue to think of what we have lost with all of the technological capabilities we have gained.
Always fun and a bit kooky. Love the way your mind works. Prestidigitations. Something about this is a Marx Brother movie. Harpo pulling an entire phone book from his pocket. And a heavy duty phone from the opoosite pocket. Then dialing and getting a pastry shop owner on the other end.
Love this imagine/scenario, Connie. xox
EM(pire) 9-0762 here....checking in from Grand Rapids, Michigan....good piece Paul
Thanks, Will! We need to bring back the old exchange mnemonics!